"Well, I'm kind of fond of the death penalty," said Rich. "I think we need the death penalty in the state of Alabama, so we're continuing to fight the Equal Justice Initiative and big law firms who have millions of dollars and want to come down here and reverse all of our death penalty cases." Ashley Rich is the Mobile County District Attorney.

The Board decided to get an early start on the next edition of Wings of Hope. Remembering the problems with the last edition due to the sudden death of the typewriter, they were not going to get caught out again. Yes, we are grateful for the donated typewriters but we have no idea when they will actually arrive on life row. And so it is very good that they started early and were able to secure typing help from our sister organization Oppose in Germany. Many, many thanks!

On June 23rd the Alabama Attorney General’s office requested execution dates for Torrey Twane McNabb, Jeffrey Lynn Borden and Doyle Lee Hamm. This in spite of botched recent executions in this state and a total lack of transparency of how or where the execution drugs were purchased and their expiration date.

Thanks to the Alabama Supreme Court's extended celebration of the Fourth of July there is no news to report, not of the negative kind anyway. Things were quiet at Holman as well although the awards for the championship competitions were handed out yesterday.

We quote from an article in the Atlantic “The U.S. Supreme Court’s latest term, which ended this week as the justices began their summer recess, saw death-penalty opponents achieve some notable victories even as the Court moved further away from abolishing capital punishment.” And although we welcome the “notable victories” the reality that the Court moved further away from abolishing the death penalty is the bottom line.